Head of People and Culture

Key Responsibilities

HR Strategy

Define, own, and deliver a people strategy that enables the organisation to achieve its goals, ensuring it remains aligned to organisational priorities, responsive to emerging needs, and supported by clear success metrics to track progress and impact.

Organisational Development

Partner with senior leaders to identify and address individual, team, and organisational skills gaps, shaping career development pathways, succession planning, and people strategies that support the effective delivery of operational and strategic objectives.

Organisational Effectiveness

Design and embed strategies that foster a high-performance culture, integrating wellbeing into organisational development priorities.
Champion continuous improvement through performance management, talent development, staff engagement, and change management, while overseeing regular reviews of HR services to ensure they remain fit for purpose and aligned with future organisational needs.

Leadership Development

Build leadership and management capability at all levels by delivering strategic programmes that strengthen leadership, grow organisational capacity, and promote inclusive behaviours, working in close collaboration with senior leadership to embed inclusive leadership practices across the organisation.

Culture and Ways of Working

Maintain our high-performance culture ensuring digital transformation, inclusion, and collaboration is embedded. Promote successful hybrid working practices.
Ensure that people affected by blood cancer are actively involved in shaping organisational decision-making and ways of working.

General Responsibilities

Lead and develop a high-performing HR team that adds strategic value.
Provide high-quality HR business intelligence, insights, and analysis to inform decision-making across the organisation.
Ensure the delivery of HR systems, processes, and policies that enable effective and efficient organisational performance.
Manage the HR budget effectively to maximise impact and sustainability.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

Knowledge

MCIPD or equivalent
Knowledge of organisation design and change methodologies and successful application of these

Skills

Proven track record of developing and delivering engagement interventions that underpin and improve high performance
Proven experience of leading, motivating and inspiring a high performing people team
Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills at all levels, including leadership teams
Strong data literacy, with the ability to interpret and use people analytics to drive decision-making

Experience

Experience of developing, implementing and leading successful learning and development strategies in line with organisational wide strategy
Experience of successful cultural change that has led to high performing teams
Experience of using different methodologies to build capacity across an organisation
Experience of successfully implementing actions that have improved equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace
Experience of designing and delivering leadership development programmes aligned to strategic priorities

About Blood Cancer UK

FLEXIBLE WORKING & OUR BENEFITS

We welcome conversations about part time working, job shares, and all forms of flexible working right from application stage. You can get in touch with us at

if you want to ask us anything about flexible working.

recruitment@bloodcancer.org.uk

Benefits:We think our benefits are brilliant, and the majority start from day 1. These are just a few of them:

30 days annual leave PLUS bank holidays
Generous pension scheme and Life Assurance
Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption leave, as well as study leave and a day off to move house
Wellbeing is a priority for us, we offer a wide range of individual and team support in our Wellbeing Hub
Our Academy is our in-house Continued Professional Development (CPD) learning and development programme, including an internal mentoring scheme. We have organisation-wide focus days, which are days set aside for you to focus on your own development, without being interrupted by emails and meetings.
Cycle to work and season ticket loans
Opportunity to take sabbaticals

Location:Working agile means we changed from having a culture where people are expected to be in the office from 9am to 5pm to one where we’re much more focused on what they deliver. We've built a positive culture where autonomy, trust, wellbeing and flexibility allow us to recruit and retain the very best people. We recognise that teams still need to come together regularly to develop relationships and strengthen collaborative working. Therefore, for the majority of roles, your contractual place of work will be one of our offices. The expectation for how often you will be required to attend the office is outlined in the job profile and will be discussed with you. Details about our hybrid and

agile working approach(including how travel expenses work) can be found on our

website.

HOW TO APPLY

We ask you to send us a CV and cover letter. In your cover letter, we'd like to know why you're interested in working with us at Blood Cancer UK. It's also helpful if you tell us why you think you are a great candidate for this role based on the skills, knowledge and expertise section above. Your cover letter doesn't have to be too long, 1-2 pages is ideal. Please don't add photos or graphics to your CV, as we use blind shortlisting at this stage of the process.

Full details about our recruitment

processes, including how we use blind shortlisting and what to expect at each stage of the process can be found on our

website. Sometimes we close our vacancies early, usually because we have had a lot of great applicants, so we’d always encourage you to apply early rather than wait until the deadline.

WHY WORK AT BLOOD CANCER UK?

We started because of Susan, we’ll get there because of you.

Blood Cancer UK was started by one family who lost their daughter, Susan, to blood cancer, and that history and sense of family continues to shape who we are today. When you join Blood Cancer UK, you don’t just become an organisational employee – you become part of a collaborative community dedicated to funding research into beating blood cancer that includes some of the most inspiring people you’ll ever meet.

And we’re not that far away from beating blood cancer. We’re confident we can do it within the next generation, and this makes us hugely ambitious and gives us a sense of real urgency. It also means we’re changing quickly as an organisation as we constantly challenge ourselves and strive to become more and more effective. This pace of change means working here isn’t for everyone. But if you’re excited by the chance to work in a fast-paced, agile and supportive environment with the focus and ambition to beat blood cancer this could be the place for you! We focus on results rather than time spent at a desk, so we deliver more for people affected by blood cancer.

EQUALITY, DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

We are committed to actively promoting equality, diversity, and inclusivity. Read our

statementwhich reflects our strong drive to change in this area.

You can read some examples of how we can support you through the application and interview process

here.

Documents

Our Hiring Process

Don't worry if you don't see any roles you want to apply for now. Register your interest to allow us to contact you when a suitable role meeting your criteria comes along. Please note that at the present time, Blood Cancer UK is unable to offer work experience placements or internships.